Monday, September 2, 2013

Election 2013

There were some interesting events during the last 3 years since the last election. Some things were nice, some things were no so. But that is the past. Let's talk about the upcoming one. As always we prefer the early voting, which means we don't have to queue up, with thousands of others on Election day to hand in our ballot paper at the local school.This early election is a perfect system, since voting is compulsory. We have a chance around 2 weeks prior to election day to make our choice. We are still puzzled how honest this country is, we still have to fill out the papers with the pencils provided in the cardboard polling booths. Pencil, right?. C'mon. I'm pretty sure there are no well paid "helpers" at the back , armed with rubbers to make some "adjustments" on the papers we placed in the envelope according to the current government climate. How hard would that be to make some corrections? Not too hard, I assume. But Australia is an honest country, and let's believe everything is black and white.So I went out to one of those early voting centers at lunch time, handed over my drivers licence and received a sheet. Yes it is literally a sheet, which would fit perfectly to a single bed. On the top of the sheet, there were the political parties in random order. Below each party there were the candidates. I had two choices. The first one to select my preferred party and put number 1 into the box, next to the party's name. Or, If I'm retired and have nothing to do, and I promise, I'm not going to die in the next 2 years, I can place numbers from 1 to 82 next to each candidate in preferred order. Of course missing one number or leaving out one candidate makes my ballot paper invalid. Hmmm... I have a holiday booked in March next year, so I opted for the easy option. While I was looking for the party I decided to vote for, I found a few odd ones I've never heard before. Quickly looked around to find the hidden camera and was waiting for the famous TV show presenters to show up, laughing at my surprise. But nothing happened in the next five minutes, so I settled down that this must be the real ballot paper.There are the parties you can hear about every day on this sheet, like the Liberal, Labor, Greens, Democratic Labour parties. Then there are the ones which I've never heard of. Here are a few them.Animal Justice Party - This must deal with some animal rights issue. Australian Christians - Yes, to mix the religion with the government makes perfect senseAnd here are the saucy ones, starting with my runner up: Australian Sex Party, Stop the Greens Party, Pirate Party Australia, Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Party, Rise Up Australia Party, Shooters and Fishers Party, Smokers' Rights Party and my favourite, No Parking Meters Party. You are kidding, aren't you? Are these real political parties? It must be a joke. No it is not. So what will happen when let's say, everyone voted for the No Parking Meters Party? Will they remove all the parking meters from all the cities in 2 years, and then they would say that they kept 100% of their election promise? Great job, go for re-election, or what?